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FORMAT: As the syllabus indicates, this paper is to be 7-10 pages in length (double-spaced) and should be considered an in-depth analytical assignment. For REL 523 students, the range should be 9-12 pages. All good answers must frame their arguments through diligent use of texts and examples from class.
NOTE: The question anticipates upcoming readings, though they are grounded in the foundational work we have already been doing.
This is NOT an opportunity to soapbox about personal beliefs (religious, political, or otherwise). You must work closely with the texts we have read up to this point in the semester. You must formulate a crisp, cogent thesis, which you defend in the body of the text, including appropriate documentation and so forth. Any questions you have about style or format can probably be answered by consulting The Chicago Manual of Style (any edition) or by consulting me.
When we consider that both religion and politics are forms of world-building and meaning-making, it is not difficult to see why their interactions are so often highly charged. In the United States, these problems are further compounded by changing attitudes surrounding patriotism, public speech/discourse, and dissent. What is the historical relationship between patriotism and dissent in the United States – have they had a healthy coexistence or have they been seen as opposites? Whichever way you answer, what does that reveal about religion and politics? Does our public discourse allow for the expression of detailed and divergent views on religion and politics? Why, or why not? Be as specific as possible with regard to texts, historical examples, and theories.
In your answer, you might consult the following debates and categories we have explored so far: the relationship between the state and civil society, the potential of civic education, the degree to which the Framers were more concerned with order than with participation, and the changing shapes of public life.
Remember: religions are on all sides of all debates, and neither slogans nor generalizations will serve your analysis well.
Texts: (just all texts given you don’t nor do i expect you to all of them ir nearly half of them)
Here are some texts (only references these texts, but not all of them have to be used in the essay):
Bruce Lincoln, “Theses on Method”: https://religion.ua.edu/links/theses-on-method/.
Malory Nye, “Whiteness, Religion, and Modernity”: https://medium.com/religion-bites/whiteness-religion-and-modernity-64729dc21e8e.
Peter Steinfels, “Globally, Religion Defies Easily Identified Patterns”: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/us/24beliefs.html.
Tobin Grant, “The Rise and Fall of Religiosity in the United States”: https://religionnews.com/2014/12/11/1940s-america-wasnt-religious-think-rise-fall-american-religion/.
Philip Jenkins, “Twelve Trends That Shaped U.S. Religion Since the 1970s”: https://ethicsdaily.com/12-trends-that-shaped-u-s-religion-since-the-70s-cms-23873/.
Carol Tucker, “The 1950s”: https://news.usc.edu/25835/The-1950s-Powerful-Years-for-Religion/.
Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to the Danbury Baptists”: https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html
James Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments”: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions43.html.
South African Constitution: http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf.
U.S. Constitution: https://www.congress.gov/constitution-annotated/.
George Washington, “Letter to Hebrew Congregation”: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135.
Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America”: http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm.
Sam Haselby, “American Secular”: https://aeon.co/essays/why-did-the-secular-ambitions-of-the-early-united-states-fail.
C. Wright Mills, “Mass Society and Liberal Education” in The Politics of Truth: https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU4302324.
Michael Walzer, “The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism”: https://www.sss.ias.edu/files/pdfs/Walzer/CommunitarianCritiqueLiberalism.pdf.
James Aho, “Revisiting Authoritarianism,” via library: https://journals-sagepub-com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/doi/10.1177/0896920519830749.
John A. Andrew III, “The Origins of the New Right” via: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/the-other-side-of-the-sixties/9780813524016.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, “How Democracies Die”: https://sites.unimi.it/carbone/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/How-democracies-die-Steven-Levitsky-Daniel-Ziblatt-The-Guardian-21-Jan.-2018.pdf.
The Port Huron Statement: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/SDS_Port_Huron.html.
Part III: The State, Legal Authority, Patriotism & Dissent
Law and the Sources of Obligation 1
Kathryn Gin Lum and Lerone Martin, “American Religion and the Rise of Internal Security”: https://content.ucpress.edu/chapters/13018.ch01.pdf.
James Madison, “Federalist No. 10”: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/coretexts/_files/resources/texts/c/1787%20Federalist%20No%2010.pdf.
Minersville School District v. Gobitis: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/310us586.
Cecilia O’Leary, “To Make a Nation” in: https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU4798956.
Sarah Imhoff, “The Supreme Court’s Faith in Belief”: https://tif.ssrc.org/2014/12/16/the-supreme-courts-faith-in-belief/.
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, “Why Distinguish Religion, Legally Speaking?”
Garrett Epps, “What Makes Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law Different?”: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/what-makes-indianas-religious-freedom-law-different/388997/.
William Lloyd Garrison: “The American Union” and Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”: https://www.cpsk12.org/cms/lib/MO01909752/Centricity/Domain/3513/8%20-%20Abolitionists.pdf.
Emma Green, “Satanists Troll Hobby Lobby”: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/satanists-troll-the-hobby-lobby-decision/375268/.
Marcus Rediker, “The ‘Quaker Comet’ was the Greatest Abolitionist You’ve Never Heard Of”: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/quaker-comet-greatest-abolitionist-never-heard-180964401/.
Catherine Beecher, “Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism”: http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abesceba2t.html.
Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?”: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/sojtruth-woman.aspT
Roe v. Wade: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18 (read the case’s “syllabus”).
Karen Tumulty and Lynn Smith, “Operation Rescue: Soldier in a ‘Holy War’ on Abortion”: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-17-mn-1621-story.html.
Heather White, “Reforming Sodom,” chapter one: https://flexpub.com/preview/reforming-sodom.
Michelle Alexander, “The New Jim Crow” introduction: https://www.vanderbilt.edu/ctp/The_New_Jim_Crow.pdf.
Ibram X. Kendi, “The American Nightmare”: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-nightmare/612457/.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations”: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/.
Francesca Hyatt, “Religious Groups Stand with #BlackLivesMatter”: https://killingthebuddha.com/ktblog/religious-groups-stand-with-blacklivesmatter/.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2000-05-14-0005140182-story.html.
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham City Jail”: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/mlk/files/letterfrombirmingham_wwcw_0.pdf.
Shaun Assael and Peter Keating, “The Massacre That Spawned the Alt-Right”: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/11/03/greensboro-massacre-white-nationalism-klan-229873.
Kelly J. Baker, “Thank God for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Michael E. Miller, “The War of Races”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/12/27/war-races-how-hateful-ideology-echoes-through-american-history/.
Southern Poverty Law Center, “Identity Evropa”: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/identity-evropaamerican-identity-movement.
David Walsh, “The Bloody History of America’s Christian Identity Movement”: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-bloody-history-of-americas-christian-identity-movement
Susannah Crockford, “How Positivity Can Lead to Conspiratorial Thinking”:
https://religiondispatches.org/how-positivity-can-lead-to-conspiratorial-thinking/.
Jessica Johnson, “The Crusade Against Critical Race Theory in Hanover County, Virginia”: https://therevealer.org/the-crusade-against-critical-race-theory-in-hanover-county-virginia/.
Richard Kent Evans, “MOVE”: https://wrldrels.org/2020/05/12/move/.
Dorothy Day, “Our Brothers, the Communists”: https://zingcreed.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/red-christian-documents-21-our-brothers-the-communists-dorothy-day-us-1949/.
Michael Sandel, “What Isn’t for Sale?”: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isn-8217-t-for-sale/8902/.
UN Human Rights report: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22546&LangID=E.
Chrystia Freeland, “The Disintegration of the World”: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/the-disintegration-of-the-world/389534/.
Kevin Kruse, “How Corporate America Invented Christian America”: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030
Steven Pearlstein, “When Shareholder Capitalism Came to Town”: http://prospect.org/article/when-shareholder-capitalism-came-town.
Rich Goldstein, “Superman is Jewish”: https://www.thedailybeast.com/superman-is-jewish-the-hebrew-roots-of-americas-greatest-superhero.
David M. Krueger, “Straight Edge Religion”: https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/straight-edge-religion-hardcore-punk-and-the-sober-revolution-by-david-m-krueger/.
Peter Walton, “Horace Tapscott Obituary”: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/horace-tapscott-1934-1999/.
Joseph Winters, “Unstrange Bedfellows: Hip-Hop and Religion.”
Thursday April 4: Religion, Arts and Politics 2
Sophia Rose Arjana, “Monstrous Muslims” in: https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU4929388.
Betty M. Bayer, “Divining Grace”: https://onbeing.org/blog/divining-grace/.
Kathleen Frydl, “U.S. is Becoming a Developing Country”: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/30/us-is-becoming-a-developing-country-on-global-rankings-that-measure-democracy-inequality/.
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, “Believing in Religious Freedom”: https://tif.ssrc.org/2012/03/01/believing-in-religious-freedom/.
Patrick Blanchfield, “God and Guns, Part One”: https://wp.nyu.edu/therevealer/2015/09/25/god-and-guns/
Kevin Sullivan, “Primed to Fight the Government”: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/05/21/armed-with-guns-and-constitutions-the-patriot-movement-sees-america-under-threat/.
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